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Universal Developing Gears of War Movie

The popular third-person shooter video game franchise Gears of War, which chronicles humanity’s battle against the Locust Horde, is currently under development at Universal Pictures with Scott Stuber (Ted, The Kingdom) and Dylan Clark (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) producing.

During a live-stream to promote the upcoming release of Gears of War 4, Rod Fergusson, studio head of game developer The Coalition, revealed that a Gears of War movie is on the way.

As a way to support the franchise the next logical step was to make the movie. We’d done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect.

At this time, it’s unknown if the film will be a direct adaptation of the games or if it will be an all-new story set in the same universe.

They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie. That’s one of the great things about working with Universal, we’re finding that line where we can say it has enough lore and canon that it feels genuine to the game while at the same time going beyond that and asking ‘OK what makes a great movie?’

Here’s to hoping the Gears of War movie gets off the ground this time around. New Line Cinema acquired rights to the property back in 2007 and even had Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard) attached to helm the adaptation, and an initial script penned by Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides). After several hiccups in the development process in the years to follow, New Line finally decided to let go of the project.

In the meantime, Gears of War 4 will be released exclusively on Xbox One & Windows 10 PC on October 11th.